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Buckley, Chloe Alexandra Germaine. "Nomadic intertextuality and postmillennial children's Gothic fiction." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2016. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/80277/.
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Since the turn of the twenty first century, Gothic has emerged as one of the most popular forms in which to write for children. Although children’s literature critics and educational professionals were once dubious about the value of scary stories for children, postmillennial Gothic has begun to receive critical praise as well as mass market popularity. This thesis explores an emergent critical discourse that champions children’s Gothic alongside a variety of examples of the form. I argue that postmillennial children’s fiction employs metafictional reflexivity and explicit intertextuality, opening out into an expansive Gothic landscape. Unhoming its protagonists, readers and critics, postmillennial children’s Gothic challenges existing paradigms in both children’s literature criticism and Gothic Studies. Foremost, this fiction disrupts accounts of children’s literature that assign the form a pedagogical function, and that construct the child reader according to linear narratives of maturation offered by psychoanalysis and ego-relational psychology. In place of the ‘psychoanalytic child’, postmillennial children’s Gothic imagines a nomadic subject, constructing child protagonists and readers across a multiplicity of subject location and identities. There is not one child, but multiple figurations. The transgressive and liberating energies of Gothic play a part in this rejection of traditional figurations of the child. However, postmillennial children’s fiction also challenges critical commonplaces in Gothic Studies. The nomadic project of children’s Gothic runs counter to the melancholic figuration of subjectivity offered by a deconstructive psychoanalytic discourse that informs some analysis of Gothic literature. Unlike the tragic subjectivity of the Gothic wanderer, the nomad offers an affirmative figuration of being. The nomad is transformed through interrelationships with others, likewise transforming the locations through which it travels, suggesting new ways of reading Gothic. Taking its cue from Rosi Braidotti’s theory of nomadic subjectivity, this thesis engages productively with a variety of children’s texts published since 2000, reading them against existing criticism. I offer my analysis of these texts as part of a creative process that imagines non-unitary, non-binary figurations of subjectivity, and seeks to reformulate notions of reading and becoming.
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Farrell, Maureen Anne. "Culture and identity in Scottish children's fiction." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2009. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/902/.
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British Children’s Literature has a long and distinguished history. In fact it could be argued that in the late seventeenth and increasingly in the eighteenth century, Britain took the lead in developing a new kind of literature especially designed for children. The Puritans were the first to recognise the potential for material specifically targeted at children as a means of reforming the personal piety of all individuals, including children. As a result, educational, instructional and religious books for children began to appear followed later by books retelling myths, legends and oral tales and later again books intended to entertain and engage children at all stages of their development. Included as part of British Children’s Literature was the work of Scottish authors. Indeed writers such as Sir Walter Scott, George MacDonald and J.M Barrie produced works that have since become Children’s Literature classics and they themselves had significant influence on diverse children’s authors including writers such as Lewis Carroll and C.S.Lewis. Though the work of Scottish authors was included in British Children’s Literature, it was not recognised specifically for its distinctively Scottish elements. In fact, increasingly from the nineteenth century, it began to be labelled as ‘English’ Children’s Literature even though it meant ‘British’. Scotland had been a separate nation until the Act of Union in 1707. After that, even as a ‘stateless nation’, Scotland retained its own education system, its own legal system and its own national church. Scottish Literature continued to flourish during this period making use of English and Scots language, as well as Gaelic, to produce an illustrious and influential literature of world renown. As Roderick Watson has observed, “the main ‘state’ left to a ‘stateless nation’ may well be its state of mind, and in that territory it is literature that maps the land.” (Watson, 1995: xxxi) Since devolution in 1997, Scotland’s literature sector has undergone an unprecedented period of rapid, sustained and dramatic expansion, a process paralleled by the growing profile of Scottish writers internationally. During the same period Scottish Children’s Literature and Scottish children’s writers have not received the same attention, though their progress has been just as significant. In the year 2000 the Modern Language Association of America recognised Scottish Literature as a national literature, and presumably Scottish Children’s Literature is included as part of that, but it was not specifically highlighted. Even up until 2006, Scottish Children’s Literature was not generally included or even mentioned in Scottish Literature anthologies or histories of Scottish Literature. When in January 2006 the Scottish Executive unveiled Scotland’s Culture, its new cultural policy, it gave Scottish Literature a prominent place. At the same time this document also acknowledged the importance of education in giving access to and highlighting Scotland’s literary heritage. It became all the more important then to recognise the existence of a corpus of work that is recognisable as Scottish Children’s Literature existing separately from but complementary to English Children’s literature and which could be used in schools by teachers and read by children in order to explore and interrogate their own cultural history and identity. This thesis seeks to investigate whether a distinctive Scottish Children’s Literature exists and, if so, to identify those aspects that make it distinctive. Further, if Scottish Children’s Literature exists, how does it become a repository for the formation of culture, identity and nationhood and how does this impact on young Scottish readers? In order to carry out this investigation the study adopts an integrated, humanistic and multi-dimensional approach towards Scottish Children’s fiction. It draws selectively and discursively on theories of reading, reader response and close reading skills for heuristic purposes; that is, on methods that further the overall hermeneutical task of enlarging understanding of the phenomenon, though no particular theoretical approach to analysis has been privileged over another. It draws on a range of overarching theoretical perspectives that work effectively in illuminating the characteristics of particular texts with and for readers. As such, the study does not pretend to provide a specific theoretical basis for the reading of Scottish Children’s Fiction. The approach adopted requires an immersion in the narratives, making unfamiliar texts familiar in order to do the work of projecting a distinctive Scottish perspective. Given that this study is among the first of its kind, it provides a base-line for others to apply specific theoretical filters to Scottish Children’s Literature for further study. Using what cultural typology and the semiotics of culture would recognise as a retrospective approach, this study intends to identify children’s texts that are recognisably Scottish and which may be considered to form a corpus of work which can be celebrated as a central part of Scottish Children’s Literature. WATSON, R. (1995) The Poetry of Scotland, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
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Lake, Wendy M. "Aspects of Ireland in children's fiction : an historical outline and analysis of children's fiction set in Ireland (1850-1986)." Thesis, University of Ulster, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.253857.
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Taylor, G. T. "The development of style in children's narrative fiction." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.384607.
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Froggatt, Anne. "Northbound : the mythic North and children's fiction, 1840-2000." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.417102.
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McKelvey, Bridgette. "Fact or fiction? : photography merging genres in children's picturebooks." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/19232/1/Bridgette_McKelvey_Thesis.pdf.
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This paper explores photography in children’s picturebooks and its ability to extend image-making and reading by creating a hybrid genre that merges real and non-real worlds. In analysing the use of photography in such a hybrid genre, the work of Lauren Child (2006, 2001a, 2001b, 2000), Polly Borland (2006), Shaun Tan (2007, 2000, 1998) and Dave McKean (2004a, 2004b, 1995) is deconstructed. These artists utilise photography in contemporary picturebooks that are fictional. In addition, David Doubilet’s images (1990, 1989, 1984, 1980) are discussed, which fuse underwater photojournalism with art, for factual outputs.
This research uncovers a gap in picturebook literature and creates a new hybrid by merging genres to produce a work that is both factual and fictional. The research methodology in this study includes a brief overview of photography and notions of truth, contemporary picturebook trend theory, use of a student focus group, industry collaborations and workshops, and environmental education pedagogy. This thesis outlines summaries of research outcomes, not the least of which is the capacity for photography to enrich narrative accounts by providing multilayered information, character perspectives and/ or a metafictive experience. These research outcomes are then applied to the process of creating such a hybrid children’s picturebook.
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McKelvey, Bridgette. "Fact or fiction? : photography merging genres in children's picturebooks." Queensland University of Technology, 2008. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/19232/.
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This paper explores photography in children’s picturebooks and its ability to extend image-making and reading by creating a hybrid genre that merges real and non-real worlds. In analysing the use of photography in such a hybrid genre, the work of Lauren Child (2006, 2001a, 2001b, 2000), Polly Borland (2006), Shaun Tan (2007, 2000, 1998) and Dave McKean (2004a, 2004b, 1995) is deconstructed. These artists utilise photography in contemporary picturebooks that are fictional. In addition, David Doubilet’s images (1990, 1989, 1984, 1980) are discussed, which fuse underwater photojournalism with art, for factual outputs.
This research uncovers a gap in picturebook literature and creates a new hybrid by merging genres to produce a work that is both factual and fictional. The research methodology in this study includes a brief overview of photography and notions of truth, contemporary picturebook trend theory, use of a student focus group, industry collaborations and workshops, and environmental education pedagogy. This thesis outlines summaries of research outcomes, not the least of which is the capacity for photography to enrich narrative accounts by providing multilayered information, character perspectives and/ or a metafictive experience. These research outcomes are then applied to the process of creating such a hybrid children’s picturebook.
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Campbell, Nick. "Children's Neo-Romanticism : the archaeological imagination in British post-War children's fantasy." Thesis, University of Roehampton, 2017. https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/studentthesis/Children’s-Neo-Romanticism(d8dd7f80-d6a7-4e02-a103-c627adc0fad1).html.
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The focus of this study is a trend in British children’s literature concerning the ancientness of British landscape, with what I argue is a Neo-Romantic sensibility. Neo-Romanticism is marked by highly subjective viewpoints on the countryside, and I argue that it illuminates our understanding of post-war children’s literature, particularly in what is often called its Second Golden Age. Through discussion of four generally overlooked authors, each of importance to this formative publishing era, I aim to explore certain aspects of the Second Golden Age children’s literature establishment. I argue that the trend I critique is characterised by ambiguity, defined by the imaginative practice entailed in the archaeological view.
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Stewart, Susan Louise Trites Roberta Seelinger. "Genre, ideology, and children's literature." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p3172884.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2004.Title from title page screen, viewed November 22, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Roberta Seelinger Trites (chair), Karen Coats, C. Anita Tarr. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-256) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Milne, Stephen. "Fiction, children's voices and the moral imagination : a case study." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2008. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10461/.
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The importance of stories in educating the moral imagination of the child provides the context for this thesis, which explores children's responses to the moral dimension of fiction. Studies in narrative psychology, literary theory and children's responses to reading also provide the empirical and theoretical background for this qualitative enquiry that compares a number of developing readers' responses to fiction in a school and classroom context. Focusing on the features that distinguish their responses to questions about moral choice and virtue in a range of stories, the thesis explores a mode of response to fiction called moral rehearsal. It identifies a range of strategies children adopt to explore and evaluate the moral world of narrative texts such as the use of moral touchstones, alternative narratives and dramatisation. It presents an original application of philosophical anthropology to the data in order to distinguish between what I call mimetic and diegetic rehearsal in children's responses. This phenomenological interpretation suggests the ways in which narratives contribute to the constitution of consciousness in the child. Drawing mainly on school-based interview conversations, peer group talk and some children's written work about a range of fiction, this enquiry adopts an interpretive, case study approach to children's moral responses to fiction. It examines the child's perspective to produce an account of moral imagination in developing readers that illuminates a previously unexplored mode of reading - moral rehearsal - relevant to theories about the development of children's reading, literary response and moral sense. It represents a contribution to the literature on children's literary experience, the empirical study of children's reading and children's moral and spiritual formation.
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Pavlik, Anthony. "A view from elsewhere : the spatiality of children's fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/1891.
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Fantasy other worlds are often seen as alternatives with which to critique the ‘real’ world, or as offering spaces where child protagonists can take advantage of the otherness they encounter in their own process of maturation. However, such readings of fantasy other worlds, rather than celebrating heterogeneity, implicitly see ‘other’ spaces as ‘unreal’ and there either to support the real in some way, as being in some way inferior to the real, or in need of salvation by protagonists from the real world. This thesis proposes a reading of such texts that draws on social theories of constructed spatiality in order to examine first how, to varying degrees, and depending upon the attitude of authors towards the figure of the child, such ‘fantasy’ places can be seen as potentially real “thirdspaces” of performance and agency for protagonists, and thus as neutral spaces of activity rather than confrontation or growth and, second, how such presentations may be seen as reflecting back into the potential for the spatial activity of readers.
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Karakosta, Kalliopi. "European children's fiction and WW2 : didacticism and the impossible narrative." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.437661.
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Bell, Alice R. "Science as pantomime : explorations in contemporary children's non-fiction books." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/11844.
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This project explores a case study in children's science culture: Horrible Science, a UK based series aimed at 7-11 year olds. Children, I believe, are one of science communication's most interesting audiences. They are both potential members and potential outsiders of the scientific community, and Horrible Science produces a liminar identity to meet these two markets. I apply a metaphor of pantomime to help describe Horrible Science, partly because of the series' approach to using fiction and its style of audience participation. It is also panto-science because it is presented as a carnivalesque show, exciting and fun, laughing at authority. Horrible Science invites us to snigger at science's heroes and explore the hidden underside of both nature and of scientific work. However, I believe that this, at least in part, is largely a matter of excusing a type of earnest reverence, delight and excitement for science that had become unfashionable by the end of the 20th century. I investigate Horrible Science as an interesting phenomenon in its own right, but also because I hope to develop ideas about the popularisation of science. Since the early 1990s, theories on popular science have tended to describe popular science as sitting (obstructively) between scientists and the rest of the world. Its public audience are defined as receivers; the scientists, the providers. However, recent work from historians of 19th century science have critiqued this view, instead positioning popular science within a 'marketplace', full of empowered consumers choosing not only what cultural products to partake of, but who to trust and how far. I accept this emphasis on the marketplace, but with a less utopian view of consumer power which retains some of the scepticism of the 1990s analytical approaches. I suggest that Horrible Science aims to appeal to its readers by implying they can use a 'horrible' version of scientific knowledge to take up a position between the great and the good of the scientific community and an assumed, unenlightened othered public. Drawing on Bourdieu's ideas on symbolic 'capitals' of culture, I conclude with a reading of popular science as a product through which interaction between and across cultural fields allows a range of actors to, at once, share social power, declare their own cultural status, and fall prey to the hierarchies of science in society.
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Jones, Justin T. "Unmaking Progress: Individual and Social Teleology in Victorian Children's Fiction." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2011. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67995/.
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This study contrasts four distinct discursive responses to (or even accidental remarks on) the Victorian concept of individual and/or social improvement, or progress, set forth by the preeminent social critics, writers, scientists, and historians of the nineteenth century, such as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Macaulay Matthew Arnold, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Spencer. This teleological ideal, perhaps the most prevalent ideology of the long nineteenth century, originates with the Protestant Christian ethic during and in the years following the Reformation, whereupon it combines with the Enlightenment notions of rational humanity's boundless potential and Romanticism's fierce individualism to create the Victorian doctrine of progress. My contention remains throughout that four nineteenth-century writers for children and adults subvert the doctrine of individual progress (which contributes to the progress of the race) by chipping away at its metaphysical and narratalogical roots. George MacDonald allows progress only on the condition of total selflessness, including the complete dissolution of one's free will, but defers the hallmarks of making progress indefinitely, due to his apocalyptic Christian vision. Lewis Carroll ridicules the notion of progress by playing with our conceptions of linear time and simple causality, implying as he writes that perhaps there is nothing to progress toward, no actual telos on which to fix our sights. Oscar Wilde characterizes moral development as nothing short of self-inflicted cruelty, consigning his most scrupulously moral-minded characters to social subversion or untimely death (the dark reflection of MacDonald's compulsory selflessness). And finally, Rudyard Kipling toys with historical substitutes for conventional progress, such as repetitive cycles, deviating from historical unidirectionality and linear development. He often realigns his characters with their intractable fates at the conclusions of his narratives, echoing Carroll's suggestion that perhaps our goals are delusional. I conclude that while each individual author fails to holistically undermine the doctrine of progress, taken collectively, these four fantasists represent a heretofore unexamined repudiation of the Victorian era's most enduring metaphysical conceits.
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Wilkinson, Sheena Maria. "Girls' school and college friendships in twentieth-century British fiction." Thesis, Durham University, 1998. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4779/.
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This study examines in detail a variety of adolescent female friendships in twentieth-century British novels, written for both the 'adult' and 'juvenile' reading public, a distinction which I argue is arbitrary, since the relationship between the two is an exceptionally close one. Scholars discussing adolescence this century have tended to ignore the experience of girls, or to reinforce patriarchal stereotypes by presenting girls in marginal and reactionary roles. Until recently, even feminist discourse on friendship has been inclined to focus on adult relationships, or to examine girls in relation to boys. Identifying these tendencies, I explore fiction set in girls' schools and colleges to determine how novelists saw this significant relationship. Girls' schools and colleges represented a significant cultural space for girls and young women to learn to value female companionship. Although most discourse on girls’ school friendships has focused on the 'crush' relationship, I was interested in determining to what extent writers valued 'ordinary' friendships, as an area of life over which girls, earlier this century, were able to exert some autonomy. The girls' school story is the obvious fictional space to celebrate adolescent female friendship in all its complexity. As a genre it has been consistently devalued by critics (perhaps partly because of the very accessibility of the schoolgirl as a cultural image) despite enjoying enduring popularity among readers of all ages, and inspiring several notable novelists to adopt its conventions for their own works, as demonstrated in this study. My approach to the texts discussed here involves a close reading of the text against an awareness of the cultural conditions in which it was produced. As I show, failure to take into account these cultural conditions can lead to misunderstanding the novels and the relationships depicted therein. This study, drawing on a wide variety of texts produced between 1909 and 1990, shows clearly that the novelists concerned were influenced to varying extents by the prevailing ideologies of their times. These ideologies often determine the importance they accord female friendship, the form it takes, and the language they use to discuss it.
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Carson, Jo. "Pulling My Leg: Story." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 1990. http://amzn.com/0531058174.
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Carson, Jo. "You Hold Me And I'll Hold You." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 1992. http://amzn.com/0531058956.
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Carson, Jo. "The Great Shaking: An Account of the Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 1994. http://amzn.com/0531068099.
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Hodge, Diana Victoria, and dhodge@utas edu au. "Victorianisms in twentieth century young adult fiction." Deakin University. School of Communication and Creative Arts, 2006. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20060525.151043.
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This thesis investigates the origins of contemporary fictional constructions of childhood by examining the extent to which current literary representations of children and childhood have departed from their Victorian origins. I set out to test my intuition that many contemporary young adult novels perpetuate Victorian ideals and values in their constructions of childhood, despite the overt circumstantial modernity of the childhoods they represent. The question this thesis hopes to answer therefore is, how Victorian is contemporary young adult fiction?
To gauge the degree of change that has taken place since the Victorian period, differences and points of continuity between representations of nineteenth century childhood and twentieth century childhood will be sought and examined in texts from both eras. The five aspects of fictional representation that I focus on are: notions of innocence; sexuality; the child as saviour; the use of discipline and punishment to create the ideal child; and the depiction of childhood and adulthood as separate worlds.
The primary theoretical framework used derives from Michel Foucaults concepts of the construction of subjectivity through discourse, discipline and punishment, and his treatment of repression and power, drawn mainly from The History of Sexuality vol. 1 (1976) and Discipline and Punish; the Birth of the Prison (1977). I have chosen to use Foucault primarily because of the affinity between his work on the social construction of knowledge and the argument that childhood is a constructed rather than essential category; and because Foucaults work on Victorian sexuality exposes links with current thinking rather than perpetuating assumptions about sexual repression in this period.
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Hirst, Miriam Laufey. "Fantasy and feminism : an intersectional approach to modern children's fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Bolton, 2018. http://ubir.bolton.ac.uk/1968/.
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This thesis compares modern children’s fantasy literature with older texts, particularly Grimms’ fairy tales. The focus is on tropes from fairy tales and myths that devalue women and femininity. In looking at these tropes, this thesis examines how they are used in modern fiction; whether they are subverted to show a more empowering vision of femininity or simply replicated in a more modern guise. Whereas other approaches in this area have addressed the representation of gender in an isolated fashion, this study adopts an intersectional approach, examining the way that different axes of oppression work together to maintain the patriarchal hegemony of powerful, white, heterosexual men. As intersectional theory has pointed out, mainstream feminism has tended to focus only on the needs and rights of more privileged women, who are themselves complicit in the oppression of their more marginalised “sisters”. Intersectional feminism, in contrast, seeks to dismantle the entire system of interlinked oppressions, rather than allowing some women to benefit from it to the detriment of others. The intersectional issues around feminism that this thesis addresses include race, disability, class, and sexuality. There is also an emphasis on female solidarity, which is championed as an effective strategy to weaken the hold of patriarchy and subvert it in its aim to “divide and conquer”. It is this intersectional approach to children’s fantasy literature that is seen as the thesis’s main contribution to knowledge. The primary texts under examination are mainly from the United Kingdom, but also include works from the United States, Australia, and Germany. All of them were originally published between 1980 and 2013. The thesis explores heroism, beauty, magic, and gender performance in these works, showing how such themes can be dealt with in ways that are either reactionary and detrimental or progressive and empowering.
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Harvey, Brenda Sue. "Children's use of fiction and nonfiction literature in a kindergarten classroom." The Ohio State University, 1993. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1248712420.
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Valentine, Valerie D. "An investigation of authenticity and accuracy in children's realistic fiction picture books set in Appalachia." Ohio : Ohio University, 2008. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1202328969.
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Thacker, Deborah Cogan. "An examination of children's inter-action with fiction, leading to the development of methodologies to elicit and communicate their responses." Thesis, Coventry University, 1996. http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/02f45a95-b816-3c19-f111-bcb0ce6fab4b/1.
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This thesis provides an examination and analysis of the social contexts of children's response to fiction in order to contribute to a theoretical perspective of literary response as a continuous process. The absence of a consideration of the way that readers are socially constructed renders any conception of literary response incomplete, and a discussion of textual, psychoanalytic and cultural theories of response reveals a gap which Children's Literature must fill. The marginalisation of Children's Literature within literary discourses silences children as readers by denying the recognition of literary engagement inherent in early experiences with fiction. In addition, an investigation of the meta-discourse which surrounds Children's Literature, through criticism, education and provision, demonstrates the way that adult mediations between children and fiction frequently interrupt an innate desire for an authoritative position for the reader within the text, replacing dynamic creative engagement with static modes of reading. In particular, an analysis of the position of children's books, including the processes for editing, selection and marketing, makes it clear, for the first time, that the social contexts of children's fiction, from jacket design to library selection, influence the construction of readers. A new method of empirical research, based on psychoanalysis, phenomenography and Chambers's 'Tell Me' approach to booktalk, provides evidence of the interplay of desire and control in the social construction of readers and reinforces the need for shared discourses. This method is illustrated by the Book Choice Study, consisting of seven individual case studies with children, their parents and teachers, which reveals the importance of an individual's reading history in the promotion of either dynamic or static modes of reading. The study shows that children who engage in a shared discourse about fiction are more likely to participate in a 'literary' engagement than those who experience a divided discourse, confirming the need for a construction of response that includes children and their books.
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Ebbelind, Eva. "Att befolka en barnlitterär värld : To populate a world in children's fiction." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-13279.
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Sands-O'Connor, Karen. "The imagination and the imagined nation : British children's fantastic fiction after 1945." Thesis, Cardiff University, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.313708.
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Chew, Laureen. "Chinese American images in selected children's fiction for kindergarten through sixth grade." Scholarly Commons, 1986. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/2131.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate Chinese American images in selected children's fiction to determine whether or not data support the position of the Council on Interracial Books for Children, that the works of fiction studied tend to stereotype Chinese Americans.
After reading the selected fifteen works of fiction, a criterion checklist was devised by the investigator to examine the behavior and lifestyle of Chinese Americans depicted in a variety of circumstances. validity of the criterion checklist was established by a panel of experts in the area of Chinese American studies. Inter-rater reliability was determined by two readers who utilized the criterion checklist to analyze the content of one lower elementary grade and one upper elementary grade work of fiction. Finally, the criterion checklist was used to analyze the fifteen works of fiction and draw conclusions related to the purpose of this study.
The findings in this study do support the conclusions of the Council on Interracial Books for Children that this group of fiction portrays Chinese Americans in a one dimensional, stereotypic manner. In the checklist items related to environment, food, utensils, physical attributes, cultural celebrations, occupations, and recreation, Chinese Americans were portrayed as adhering to Chinese-specific characteristics. However, in cross-cultural and behavioral items, Chinese Americans were portrayed as desiring Western-specific characteristics. This tendency was especially prevalent in upper elementary grade fiction. A more integrative or multi-dimensional view of Chinese Americans appreciating, and able to function well in, both cultural contexts is disconcertingly absent.
Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made:
1. That teachers, librarians, and other school personnel who use this collection of books, supplement them with materials containing contemporary and realistic information about Chinese Americans.
2. That future writers of children's fiction dealing with Chinese Americans portray them in a multidimensional manner.
3. That curriculum writers of textbooks use a similar criterion checklist to offset the one-dimensionality of Chinese American images in existing children's literature.
4. That future writers of children's fiction on Chinese Americans utilize a criterion checklist such as the one in this study to assist them in developing multi-dimensional characters.
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Crossland, R. Bert (Rodney Bert). "A Content Analysis of Children's Historical Fiction Written about World War II." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1996. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279151/.
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The purpose of this study was to investigate the evolution of children's historical fiction dealing with World War II in order to describe the changes that have occurred over the past 50 years. Two questions were asked in the study: (1) Has the characterization of protagonists portrayed in historical fiction about World War H evolved since 1943? and (2) Have the accounts of the events of World War H portrayed in historical fiction evolved since 1943? Content analysis was used as the method of collecting data. The sample consisted of 86 novels written from 1943 to 1993. Upon completing the reading and coding, the researcher discussed the categories and questions posed. As part of analysis, the discussion of the novels in each period was accompanied with an overview of trends in children's literature and events affecting society. The analysis led to the following conclusions: 1. Authors were impacted by changes in the social and political climate, as evidenced by the changes in the gender of the protagonists, an increase of violence, and the inclusion of women. 2. Novels written during the 1980s and 1990s were written with a stronger American perspective. 3. At the time that an increase of violence was seen in American society, descriptions of World War II events and protagonists' actions became more violent and more graphic. 4. Though the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war with Japan, an inadequacy still exists in the number of novels that provide readers with details related to the atomic bombs. Though much of World War II was fought in the Pacific Rim, a deficiency remains in the number of novels set in Pacific Rim countries. Recommendations for further research include performing a study that examines other genres, analyzing the changes observed in the portrayal of protagonists. A study could be conducted to analyze the author's ethnicity and relationship to the war and determine if differences exist.
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com, ricepot@gmail, and Cynthia Mei-Li Chew. ""It's stupid being a girl!" The Tomboy character in Selected Childrens Series Fiction." Murdoch University, 2009. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20090430.203438.
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The tomboy is a female character that has featured prominently in many popular works of children's literature. Typically, the tomboy is a prepubescent or teenaged girl who is frustrated by the expectations and limitations placed upon her because she is female. She is reluctant to conform to feminine standards of appearance and behaviour.
This thesis examines the representation and evolution of the tomboy character in two distinct categories of children's series fiction, 'books in a series' and 'series books'[1], focusing on narratological elements such as plot, characterisation and series structure, as well as their publishing context, exploring issues of authorial intent, editorial decisions and, in certain cases, the official revision of texts. 'Books in a series' are usually presented as bildungsroman that is, stories, or in this case, series, of development. In these narratives, time progresses and the characters age; tomboyishness is depicted as a temporary phase which is grown out of when a girl matures, and learns to accept and perform femininity. In contrast, 'series books' are centred on adventure and/or mystery stories, rather than on the process of growing up the characters' ages are typically frozen, and tomboyishness is a distinguishing character attribute which remains for the course of the series.
In studying children's literature, it is important to acknowledge that the audience of children's literature includes adults as well as children it is after all, adults who determine and control the production, distribution and legitimisation of texts for children. Originally, children's literature was written specifically for the religious, moral, behavioural and social instruction of children, rather than for their entertainment. Although appearing less overtly didactic in recent times, the production of childrens literature has continued to be driven by the adult concern for ideological appropriateness, and the desire to responsibly educate its young readers. This concern and desire are fuelled by the underlying and persistent belief that children are like sponges and will absorb whatever they are exposed to[2], including representations of gender difference and gender performance. The ways in which the tomboy character has evolved in the children's series are a direct reflection of the shifts in societys ideas about gender, the gendered education of children, and the adult conception of what is ideologically appropriate for the childrens text.
The tomboy character in children's literature has been an important cultural marker of both our evolving and constant values. It is clear that over time gender roles have changed significantly, allowing girls in series fiction to be sleuths, rescuers, warriors and adventurers, but through all of this change, the representation of the tomboy has always reflected adults' conception of what is ideologically appropriate and normal and therefore desirable, in the representation of masculinity and femininity, gender and sexuality in childrens literature a normality and system of gender based on a steadfast heterosexual hegemony.
[1] Inness, Sherrie A., ed. Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997, p.2.
[2] Sternheimer, Karen. It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003, p.181.
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Bainbridge, Judith. "Storybook schools : representations of schools and schooling in British children's fiction 1820-1880." Thesis, University of Roehampton, 2015. https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/studentthesis/storybook-schools(dd59298f-a634-4e4e-9d3f-7071a3364ee1).html.
Full textAbstract:
The study is organised around five themes which were central to nineteenth-century educational debate, and which I have chosen for discussion because they are addressed recurrently in both fictional and extra-literary texts. The selected themes relate to the contribution of domestic education to the moral and spiritual formation of the individual child, the characteristics of the school as a community and socialisation within it, health, sickness and physical education, the content of the curriculum, and preparation for adult roles. In the first chapter I establish the literary, educational and social context for the research. Beginning with a consideration of Fielding’s The Governess; or, Little Female Academy as a paradigm for the school story, I go on to show how nineteenth-century writers adopted and adapted this model both to teach and entertain child readers, and to interpret and interrogate the changing educational scene. After outlining the principal contexts of schooling for both boys and girls, I conclude the chapter by defining the ideals of gender which determined educational practice, and which underpin my entire thesis. I follow this with five chapters, each showing how fiction and non-fiction address one of the aspects of contemporary theory and practice identified above. Chapter Two centres on the debate concerning the merits of domestic education as opposed to formal schooling. I draw chiefly on fictional and theoretical texts by Elizabeth Sewell and Harriet Martineau to examine representations of home and school as both complementary and conflicting sites for spiritual and moral education. Chapter Three considers the organisation of education in more detail. It examines contrasting models of formal schooling delineated in a range of fictional and non-fictional texts, and explores ways in which stories both endorse and challenge ideals of the girls’ school as a surrogate family, and the boy’s school as a ‘little world’ reflecting the gendered roles, relationships and responsibilities characteristic of wider society. In exploring the concept of the school as community and its contribution to the socialisation of the individual, this chapter also highlights the negative influences of institutional schooling as expressed in abusive power structures. In Chapter Four I discuss conflicting attitudes towards the body, contrasting the growing emphasis on physical education and the growth of the cult of games with the idealisation of the invalid and the widespread neglect of provision for health. Chapter Five centres on the debate about the content and delivery of the different curricula offered to boys and to girls, and on opinion relating to the impact of formal teaching and learning on the definition and reinforcement of gender roles. It gives particular consideration to Farrar’s critique of the classical curriculum in both fictional and non-fictional texts, and to the growing debate about the content of girls’ education in an era when young women were increasingly expected to support themselves financially. Chapter Six extends this discussion by examining more closely the representation of the school as a place of social, mental, moral and spiritual preparation for adult life. It identifies different expressions of the Victorian ideology of work in both fiction and non-fiction, and explores ways in which selected stories portray the transition of young people from school to university, vocational training, and employment or, in the case of many girls, to the responsibilities of marriage and family life. Ideals of femininity and masculinity are central to the representation and discussion of schooling throughout the period under consideration, and, as indicated above, I shall give closer consideration to the relationship between gender and education in Chapter 1. Consequently, I have organised each chapter to allow for the separate discussion of fictional texts for boys and those for girls in order to reflect the very different educational experiences and opportunities available to the two sexes, as well as to demonstrate the capacity of fiction to interrogate conventional gender boundaries. As my research questions indicate, my chief interest in considering each of these aspects of schooling has been to investigate and clarify the relationship between fiction and its historical context. My title is inspired by Christine Chaundler’s The Story-Book School (1931), a text which juxtaposes the protagonist’s actual experience of boarding school life with the apparently fanciful ideas she has imbibed from reading. Ultimately she finds that fiction proves closer to the truth than expected, leading the writer to conclude, ‘The things that happen in story-book schools are sometimes founded on fact, it seemed’ (95). I intend to show that the same may be said of the corpus of much earlier texts which form the focus of this study.
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Ibrahim, Wesam. "Linguistic approaches to crossover fiction : towards an integrated approach to the analysis of text worlds in children's crossover fantasy fiction." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.684376.
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Beere, Diana. "Nurturing ideology: Representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian adolescent fiction." Thesis, Griffith University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/366558.
Full textAbstract:
This study analyses the ways in which motherhood is represented in a corpus of contemporary, critically acclaimed Australian adolescent fiction. The 18 texts in the research corpus were those short-listed by the Children's Book Council of Australia for its annual Book of the Year: Older Readers award in the years 1992 to 1994 inclusive. The publicity, prestige and power attached to these awards means that short-listed books, taken to be 'good' books for children and adolescents, are often used as educational resources in Australian schools, particularly to support teaching and learning activities in literacy and English education. Recognising adolescent fiction as a potentially significant site of contestation over the social justice ideals that inform Australia's national curriculum documents, the study sought to document the ways in which these texts are implicated in the production and reproduction of ideologies of motherhood.
The study was informed by the understanding that meanings are not inherent to texts, but are constructed by readers as they adopt particular subject positions in relation to texts and enter into what, in effect, are social relationships with them. From this perspective, the analysis required attention not only to textual features of the research corpus, but also to the various other resources on which readers might reasonably draw to construct meanings. This meant attending to intertextuality, that is, the relationships between the fictional narratives on which the study focused and other cultural texts, including the visual and spoken texts of everyday life, and to the ways in which readers are encouraged or required to draw on these intertexts as meaning-making resources. The study recognised that readers' primary mean-making resources are common-sense ideologies, understood as the widely shared and taken-for-granted understandings about the social world that inform much of the everyday social action and interaction among members of a society.
The study was also underpinned by an understanding of motherhood as a social construct rather than an essentially biologically determined state, and therefore as having meanings that are subject to contestation and revision. To establish the range of contemporary understandings about motherhood on which readers might draw to make sense of textual representations of motherhood, the study drew on the findings of recent research into the discursive construction of motherhood, with particular attention to what currently prevails as common sense. These common-sense understandings about motherhood, together with the alternative discourses on which readers might draw to construct meaning, subsequently informed the analyses of the research corpus.
Given the size of the corpus, only six of the texts were selected for close attention. The analyses of these texts were supplemented with less detailed analyses of the remainder of the corpus, focusing on the themes that emerged most powerfully from the first six analyses. While some attention was given to the linguistic features of the texts, the analytical process focused most closely on their narrative features and the ways in which particular narrative strategies work to limit the range of possible meanings that readers can construct by rendering some meanings more 'obvious' than others. Particular attention was given to the focalising strategies through which fictional narratives exert much of their power to persuade readers to adopt certain subject positions rather than others, and hence to construct meaning in certain ways, with consequences in terms of the production and reproduction of ideologies.
The analyses revealed that prevailing common-sense ideologies of motherhood are not significantly challenged by the ways in which motherhood is represented in the research corpus. While there are points in some of the narratives that might serve as platforms from which to construct alternative understandings about motherhood, particularly for those readers who are equipped with critical reading strategies, the narratives never actively and unequivocally encourage readers to challenge common-sense understandings. Rather, their major contribution to contemporary ideological struggles over the meaning of motherhood is directed towards ensuring continued widespread acceptance of the discursively constructed 'truths' that work to legitimate a social order in which the lives of girls and women are regulated on the basis of their categorisation as potential or actual mothers. The study concluded that the texts in the research corpus are actively engaged in undermining contemporary social struggles for social justice and equity.
The study's findings have a number of significant implications for theory development, policy, practice and future research, both within and beyond the field of education, and these are discussed in the final chapter. In particular, the findings are relevant to literacy education, where they highlight the need for educators to develop and implement critical literacy pedagogies that draw students' attention to the textual workings of ideology. The findings suggest that what students need, arguably more than they need 'good' literature, are meta-level reading skills and strategies with which they can resist being manipulated by texts, whether they are fictional narratives of the kind analysed for this study or the various other written, spoken and visual texts that are typically encountered in everyday social life.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Cognition, Language and Special Education
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Chew, Cynthia Mei-Li. ""It's stupid being a girl!" : the tomboy character in selected children's series fiction /." Murdoch University Digital Theses Program, 2008. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20090430.203438.
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Burnes, Duncan. "The Gothic in children's literature : the creation of the adolescent in crossover fiction." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2016. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/12031/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis traces the literary course of gothic narrative elements as they appear within children’s fiction, beginning from the late eighteenth century and concluding at the close of the nineteenth century. The thesis presents evidence and potentialities for children’s appropriation of gothic fiction written for adults, and links them to the contemporaneous development of gothic devices in fiction written for children. These are argued to reflect a single phenomenon: The burgeoning relevance, literary and social, of the adolescent, in whom gothic and children’s fictions find a natural point of crossover. This thesis contextualises critical negativity towards the gothic and particularly to potential adolescent audiences, highlighting how contentious and therefore radical their relationship was. Nonetheless, the thesis introduces two hitherto obscure examples of early gothic children’s fiction from the end of the eighteenth century which provide initial evidence of this trend, alongside readings of parodic representations of adolescent gothic consumption. This is developed in an analysis of twelve early nineteenth-century gothic bluebooks, examples of short, cheap gothic fiction, for their relevance and, more significantly, accessibility to potential adolescent readers. This point suggests mechanisms by which the very means used to acquire fiction can foster the development of the adolescent social unit. The adolescent, or maturing child, is then considered as a specifically literary figure, with the character-type’s role, both in major canonical works of fiction and more esoteric texts aimed at narrower and often younger audiences, scrutinised for continuing gothic resonance particular to their immature age and experience. The conclusion of this reading of literary and social history for evidence of the joint occurrence and significance of gothic and adolescence produces a theory regarding gothic fiction’s significance to the understanding and acceptance of the adolescent in society, and the success of the seemingly unlikely partnership of the gothic in children’s fiction.
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Chew, Cynthia Mei-Li. "It's stupid being a girl!: the tomboy character in selected children's series fiction." Thesis, Chew, Cynthia Mei-Li (2009) It's stupid being a girl!: the tomboy character in selected children's series fiction. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2009. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/454/.
Full textAbstract:
The tomboy is a female character that has featured prominently in many popular works of children's literature. Typically, the tomboy is a prepubescent or teenaged girl who is frustrated by the expectations and limitations placed upon her because she is female. She is reluctant to conform to feminine standards of appearance and behaviour.
This thesis examines the representation and evolution of the tomboy character in two distinct categories of children's series fiction, 'books in a series' and 'series books'[1], focusing on narratological elements such as plot, characterisation and series structure, as well as their publishing context, exploring issues of authorial intent, editorial decisions and, in certain cases, the official revision of texts. 'Books in a series' are usually presented as bildungsroman - that is, stories, or in this case, series, of development. In these narratives, time progresses and the characters age; tomboyishness is depicted as a temporary phase which is grown out of when a girl matures, and learns to accept and perform femininity. In contrast, 'series books' are centred on adventure and/or mystery stories, rather than on the process of growing up - the characters' ages are typically frozen, and tomboyishness is a distinguishing character attribute which remains for the course of the series.
In studying children's literature, it is important to acknowledge that the audience of children's literature includes adults as well as children - it is after all, adults who determine and control the production, distribution and legitimisation of texts for children. Originally, children's literature was written specifically for the religious, moral, behavioural and social instruction of children, rather than for their entertainment. Although appearing less overtly didactic in recent times, the production of children's literature has continued to be driven by the adult concern for ideological appropriateness, and the desire to responsibly educate its young readers. This concern and desire are fuelled by the underlying and persistent belief that children are like sponges and will absorb whatever they are exposed to[2], including representations of gender difference and gender performance. The ways in which the tomboy character has evolved in the children's series are a direct reflection of the shifts in society's ideas about gender, the gendered education of children, and the adult conception of what is ideologically appropriate for the children's text.
The tomboy character in children's literature has been an important cultural marker of both our evolving and constant values. It is clear that over time gender roles have changed significantly, allowing girls in series fiction to be sleuths, rescuers, warriors and adventurers, but through all of this change, the representation of the tomboy has always reflected adults' conception of what is ideologically appropriate and normal and therefore desirable, in the representation of masculinity and femininity, gender and sexuality in children's literature - a normality and system of gender based on a steadfast heterosexual hegemony.
[1] Inness, Sherrie A., ed. Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997, p.2.
[2] Sternheimer, Karen. It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003, p.181.
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Chew, Cynthia Mei-Li. "It's stupid being a girl!: the tomboy character in selected children's series fiction." Chew, Cynthia Mei-Li (2009) It's stupid being a girl!: the tomboy character in selected children's series fiction. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2009. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/454/.
Full textAbstract:
The tomboy is a female character that has featured prominently in many popular works of children's literature. Typically, the tomboy is a prepubescent or teenaged girl who is frustrated by the expectations and limitations placed upon her because she is female. She is reluctant to conform to feminine standards of appearance and behaviour.
This thesis examines the representation and evolution of the tomboy character in two distinct categories of children's series fiction, 'books in a series' and 'series books'[1], focusing on narratological elements such as plot, characterisation and series structure, as well as their publishing context, exploring issues of authorial intent, editorial decisions and, in certain cases, the official revision of texts. 'Books in a series' are usually presented as bildungsroman - that is, stories, or in this case, series, of development. In these narratives, time progresses and the characters age; tomboyishness is depicted as a temporary phase which is grown out of when a girl matures, and learns to accept and perform femininity. In contrast, 'series books' are centred on adventure and/or mystery stories, rather than on the process of growing up - the characters' ages are typically frozen, and tomboyishness is a distinguishing character attribute which remains for the course of the series.
In studying children's literature, it is important to acknowledge that the audience of children's literature includes adults as well as children - it is after all, adults who determine and control the production, distribution and legitimisation of texts for children. Originally, children's literature was written specifically for the religious, moral, behavioural and social instruction of children, rather than for their entertainment. Although appearing less overtly didactic in recent times, the production of children's literature has continued to be driven by the adult concern for ideological appropriateness, and the desire to responsibly educate its young readers. This concern and desire are fuelled by the underlying and persistent belief that children are like sponges and will absorb whatever they are exposed to[2], including representations of gender difference and gender performance. The ways in which the tomboy character has evolved in the children's series are a direct reflection of the shifts in society's ideas about gender, the gendered education of children, and the adult conception of what is ideologically appropriate for the children's text.
The tomboy character in children's literature has been an important cultural marker of both our evolving and constant values. It is clear that over time gender roles have changed significantly, allowing girls in series fiction to be sleuths, rescuers, warriors and adventurers, but through all of this change, the representation of the tomboy has always reflected adults' conception of what is ideologically appropriate and normal and therefore desirable, in the representation of masculinity and femininity, gender and sexuality in children's literature - a normality and system of gender based on a steadfast heterosexual hegemony.
[1] Inness, Sherrie A., ed. Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997, p.2.
[2] Sternheimer, Karen. It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003, p.181.
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Minton, Duygu. "Re-working Novelistic Sentiment: Barbauld, Smith, Edgeworth, and the Politics of Children's Fiction." OpenSIUC, 2013. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/727.
Full textAbstract:
Despite the recognized importance of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Maria Edgeworth, and Charlotte Smith as commentators on 1790s radicalism, pedagogy, and novel conventions, their writings for children and for adults tend to be studied separately. Indeed, despite each writer's familiarity with the others' work, these figures are rarely discussed together. I argue that studying these authors' cross-generic works using a comparative approach reveals the ways in which novels and children's books have informed and influenced each other, both in their reciprocal developments and as distinct genres. I further argue that even as the juvenile fiction of Barbauld, Edgeworth, and Smith seems rather tamely oriented toward the integration of natural history with conduct lessons, the genre was in fact a vital means by which each writer weighed her own social-welfare and aesthetic priorities within contexts of political upheaval.
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Sambell, Kay. "The use of future fictional time in novels for young readers." Thesis, University of York, 1996. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/4269/.
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Valentine, Valerie D. "An Investigation of Authenticity and Accuracy in Children’s Realistic Fiction Picture Books Set in Appalachia." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1202328969.
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Elvery, Laura. "A complex concoction: Thinking through the thingness of lollies in children's literature." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2016. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/102282/1/Laura_Elvery_Thesis.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines fiction for children in which lollies appear. Children's books often feature scenes of lolly houses, sweet feasts and sugary temptations. Lollies take on a social and sensory importance often unimagined by readers; more than food in children's literature, they become objects of ritual and memory. This practice-led project examines the endurance of confectionery in children's fiction, and draws on a range of stories to illustrate the vitality of these objects in children's fictional lives. Driven by the creation of an original fiction manuscript, Sugartown, and close textual analysis of other works, this thesis reveals how characters in fiction are changed through their encounters with lollies. Using a phenomenological line of enquiry developed by Martin Heidegger, Bill Brown, Steven Connor, and others, this thesis argues that conventional discussions of lollies often fail to divulge their vitality, power and their multiplicity. Lollies are not merely reducible to food objects; rather, they are complex objects that hold, create and retain ritual and memory.
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Renner, Jasmine R. "You Must Climb the Tree If You Want to Eat The Fruits." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2013. http://amzn.com/1500426091.
Full textAbstract:
"You Must Climb The Tree If You Want to Eat The Fruits" will teach your child or children the invaluable lesson of hard work and persistence. It teaches children about the invaluable lesson of hard work and persistence in order to partake of good things. In this story, Roland sets out to climb an age old tree called "Vine Grove." Vine Grove was full of juicy, tempting and ripe fruits. Day after day, Roland sat under the tree and dreamt about eating the fruits. He thought it was impossible to climb the tree because it was a very big tree. Twice he attempted to climb the tree but he fell down and could not reach the fruits. Roland became desperate to eat of its fruits. Finally one day, Roland embarks on this life changing journey of climbing the tree and eating the fruits on the tree.https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1079/thumbnail.jpg
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Brodie, Jessica J. "Children in science fiction utopias: feminism's blueprint for change." FIU Digital Commons, 1999. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2425.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this thesis was to examine the treatment and portrayal of children in science fiction utopian literature and determine whether this effectively indicated the writers’ feminist visions for social change. A feminist theoretical perspective and critical interpretation of several of the genre’s canon, Sheri Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country, Suzy McKee Chamas’s Motherlines, Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series, were used as research methodologies.
The findings revealed that children communicate feminist prescriptions for change in three ways: children as the literal, biological future, the link between two opposing societies, or the explanation for the difficult philosophies and structural elements of the societies. As this subject has been an unexplored area of criticism, it is recommended that critics begin to examine this treatment of children to more easily understand the writers’ social visions and effect their blueprints for change.
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Limon, Helen. "Creative friction : representations of child-carer relationships in contemporary children's fiction and Om Shanti, Babe, a novel for children." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/1592.
Full textAbstract:
As a way to interrogate and deepen the representation of the two mother-daughter relationships at the centre of my novel, I undertook an investigation of the way understanding of relationships between primary carers and children has been theorised from the mid-twentieth century to the present, paying particular attention to the frequently conflicted period of adolescence. Because my novel is primarily concerned with the relationships between mothers and daughters, feminist theories about mothering were central to my research. The critical component of this submission takes its cue from the way feminists have drawn upon and reworked D.W. Winnicott’s explanations of the ambivalence characteristic of mother-infant relationships. Because adolescence usually involves a secondary separation from carers (the first is associated with the infant’s experience of weaning and toilet training) it is often accompanied by a return of the repressed feelings of ambivalence. My analysis looks at how these feelings are presented in a range of children’s fictions for preteens and teens written between 1975 and 2007. It is notable that across the sample, which examines a variety of carer-child relationships, readers are encouraged to identify good caring models as those which embody a cluster of traditional values and behaviours and which privilege the needs of child[ren] The primary texts are analysed with reference to the theories of Donald Winnicott, Bruno Bettelheim, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Patricia Hill Collins, Rozsika Parker, and Andrea Doucet. Throughout, the conclusions of my research are related to my novel, Om Shanti Babe, which is set in India and compares a mother-daughter pair from the UK travelling in India with an Indian mother-daughter relationship. Nine children’s novels are discussed: Almond, David, My Dad’s a Birdman (2007) Furlong, Monica, Wise Child (1987) Hidier, Tanuja Desai, Born Confused (2003) Magorian, Michelle, Goodnight Mister Tom (1981) Mahey, Margaret, Memory (1987) Morpurgo, Michael, Kensuke’s Kingdom (1999) Reeve, Philip, Here Lies Arthur (2007) Wilson, Jacqueline, Dustbin Baby (2001) Wilson, Jacqueline, The Illustrated Mum (1999)
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Wagenaar, Peter Simon. "The shadowed corners of sunlit ruins: Gothic elements in twentieth century children's adventure fiction." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002293.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the way in which children's adventure fiction makes use of Gothic features, how these features have been modified for a younger audience and how these modifications have been influenced by other developments in children's and popular fiction: Chapter One sets out to define the nature of Gothic and isolate those aspects of it relevant to the proposed study. It puts forward a theory to account for the movement of Gothic trends into later children's fiction. Chapter Two examines the use of landscape, setting and atmospheric effects in Gothic and the way in which children's fiction has used similar trappings to create similar effects. Children's fiction, emphasising pleasurable excitement rather than fear has, however, muted these effects somewhat and played down the role of the supernatural, so intrinsic to Gothic. Chapter Three emphasises the Gothic's use of stereotypes, focusing on the portrayal of heroes and heroines. Those of children's fiction are portrayed very similarly to those of Gothic and the chapter compares and, on occasion, contrasts them noting, inter alia, their adherence to rigid moral codes and narrowly defined norms of masculine and feminine behaviour. Chapter Four looks at the portrayal of villains and the way in which their appearance defines them as such (as, indeed, does that of heroes and heroines). It examines in some detail their relationship to and interaction with the heroes and heroines, noting, for example, the 'pseudo-parental' role of villains who are characteristically older and in socially approved positions to exert power over heroes and heroines. The Conclusion addresses the fantasy aspect of these novels,referred to several times in passing in the course of earlier chapters, and comments on how the features detailed in Chapters Two, Three and Four all operate within the conventions of a fantasy.
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Sachet, Alison. "Children's and Adults' Prosocial Behavior in Real and Imaginary Social Interactions." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12992.
Full textAbstract:
In everyday life, there are many situations that elicit emotional reactions to an individual's plight, leading to empathic thoughts and helping behaviors. But what if the observed situation involves fictional characters rather than real life people? The main goal of this dissertation was to investigate the extent that empathic thoughts and helping behaviors characterize children's responses to fictional social interactions, as well as to real ones. Another goal was to develop a new measure of prosocial behavior.
In Study 1, 60 undergraduate students (36 female; Mage = 19.87, SDage = 4.46) played two computerized ball-tossing games, one with 3 co-players who were believed to be other students and one in which a ball was tossed between 3 walls. During the second half of each game, one of the co-players/walls was excluded by the other two co-players/walls; the participant's subsequent increase in passes to the excluded co-player/wall was recorded. Participants increased their passes to the excluded real co-player more than to the excluded wall, indicating that the increase in the Real Condition were attempts to help another person, rather than simply to even out the distribution of passes.
Study 2 extended these findings to children and tested the relationship between reactions to real and fictional social interactions. Seventy-one 5- and 8-year-old children (36 females; 35 5-year-olds: Mage = 5 years, 8.2 months, SDage = 2.4 months; 36 8-year-olds: Mage = 8 years, 6.5 months, SDage = 2.9 months) played the computerized ball tossing game with (1) other children they believed to be real, (2) novel cartoon characters, and (3) walls. One of the co-players/walls was excluded in the second half of each game. Although children reported similar empathic reactions towards the excluded real and fictional co-players, they increased their passes to the excluded real co-player more than to the excluded fictional character or wall (controlling for individual differences in real life empathy). These results suggest that children's emotional reactions to what they experience in fiction and in real life are similar, but they take the behavioral steps to help another individual only when that individual is believed to be a real person.
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Ibrahim, Wesam Mohamed Abdel-Khalek. "Towards an integrated approach to the analysis of text worlds in children's crossover fantasy fiction." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.547986.
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Foster, Ludovic. "Narratives of tomboy identity in fiction and film : exploring a hidden history." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2016. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/65458/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is an exploration of the tomboy figure across a range of literary and cinematic texts from the nineteenth century to the present day. The tomboy may seem to be a familiar cultural archetype, but my study also examines lesser-known, often marginalised aspects of the figure, with the intention of bringing to light new dimensions of tomboys and what they signify. Reaching beyond well-known stories, I have looked at tomboy representations outside the Eurocentric and North American versions, bringing in examples from the Caribbean, South America, Asia, and from within the postcolonial diaspora. Exploring these various hidden tomboy histories has meant engaging with work on how the tomboy figure might ask us to rethink settled notions of childhood gender identity, of the queer child, and the very concept of childhood itself as a queer temporality. Moving from a study of Wuthering Heights and nineteenth century children's fiction, I consider more recent tomboys in a small number of international films (drawing here on concepts of embodiment, materiality and the sensuous experience of cinema) before investigating how tomboy figures relate to questions of ethnic subjectivity in novels by Jamaica Kincaid and Catherine Johnson. By covering such a wide range of historical periods, genres and texts, the aim is to trace the complexities of the tomboy, a child figure that has always had strong connotations of gender transformation and gender rebellion, and is often associated with a playful and empowering otherness while conversely carrying with it the suggestion of reaffirming patriarchal, binary gender identities.
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Chen, Jou-An. "An exploration of nature and human development in young adult historical fantasy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/282878.
Full textAbstract:
Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.
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Cook, Adele M. "Genre, gender and nation : ideological and intertextual representation in contemporary Arthurian fiction for children." Thesis, University of Bedfordshire, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10547/583211.
Full textAbstract:
Within late twentieth and early twenty-first century children’s literature there is a significant interest amongst authors and readers for material which recreates the Arthurian myth. Many of these draw on medieval texts, and the canonical texts of the English tradition have been particularly influential. Yet within this intertextual discourse the influence of the Victorian works is noticeable. This thesis explores the relationship between contemporary children’s Arthuriana and the gendered and national ideologies of these earlier works. Using feminist critical discourse analysis, it discusses the evolution of Arthuriana for the child reader, with a particular focus on four contemporary texts: Michael Morpurgo’s (1994) Arthur, High King of Britain, Mary Hoffman’s (2000) Women of Camelot: Queens and Enchantresses at the Court of King Arthur, Diana Wynne Jones’ (1993) Hexwood and the BBC series Merlin (2008-2012). Exploring the historicist and fantasy genres opens up a discourse surrounding the psychology of myth which within the context of Arthurian literature creates a sense of a universal ‘truth’. This work reveals that authorial intent, in both historicist and fantasy narratives, is often undercut by implicit ideologies which reveal unconscious cultural assumptions. The cultural context at the time of textual production and consumption affects the representations of both the ideologies of gender and nation and yet the authority of myth and history combine to create a regressive depiction more in keeping with literature from the Victorian and post-World War II eras. This is explored through a review of the literature for children available since the Age of Reason, and the didactic model which has been prevalent throughout the Arthurian genre. This thesis explores why a regressive representation is appealing within a twenty-first century discourse through an engagement with theories of feminism(s) and postfeminism. This thesis ascertains why the psychology of myth affects the reimagining of Arthuriana, and explores the retrospective nature of intertextuality in order to reflect on the trend for regressive representations in children’s Arthurian literature.
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McKellar, Kyla. "Little house on Gold Mountain: A micro-analysis of racialization and colonialism in children's historical fiction." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/6413.
Full textAbstract:
Grade three students in the Ontario education system learn about "pioneers" to satisfy the requirements of the Social Studies curriculum. Historical fiction can be used as an addition to the curriculum, and may offer children a way to learn about, and perhaps even identify with, Canada's past. The purpose of this study was to problematize two works of historical fiction that have been used in an Ontario classroom: Little house in the big woods (Wilder, 1932), and Ticket to Curlew (Lottridge, 1992). These stories present racialized, colonial depictions of European resettlers (i.e. "pioneers"), and perpetuate preferred or dominant discourses about history (Hall, 1993; Furniss, 1999). Presented as a "micro-context" (Cohen, 1992), this discussion utilizes Snead's (1994) analytical categories (i.e. marking, mythification, and omission) to understand how these works of juvenile historical fiction are racialized through the use of "colonial narratives" (Furniss, 1999). As an alternative to colonial, dominant readings of history, Paul Yee's Tales from Gold Mountain (1989) offers a collection of short stories, which focus on the possible experiences of Chinese-Canadians. While the characters in Wilder's and Lottridge's books are implicitly and explicitly marked as "white," Yee's characters are Chinese, providing readers with non-European Canadian history. Providing alternative narratives is important because, as some literature has shown, students may emotionally or physically disengage from the educational system if they feel that they are not given, nor are they encouraged to seek, negotiated or oppositional (Hall, 1993) readings of history that might reflect their identity, or life experiences (Dei, Mazzuca, Mclssac & Zine, 1998; James, 1994/1995).
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Nephew, Irene J. "An ethnographic content analysis of children's fiction picture books reflecting African American culture published 2001-2005." Manhattan, Kan. : Kansas State University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/1802.
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